18-letter words containing p, u, r, e, l
- sea-level pressure — the atmospheric pressure, at any elevation, reduced by formula to a value approximating the pressure at sea level.
- self-preoccupation — the state of being preoccupied.
- separate but equal — pertaining to a racial policy, formerly practiced in some parts of the United States, by which black people could be segregated if granted equal opportunities and facilities, as for education, transportation, or jobs.
- simple enumeration — a procedure for arriving at empirical generalizations by haphazard accumulation of positive instances.
- speak for yourself — If you say 'Speak for yourself' when someone has said something, you mean that what they have said is only their opinion or applies only to them.
- special prosecutor — (formerly) an independent counsel.
- spectrofluorimeter — an instrument in which the spectrum of secondarily emitted fluorescent light is used to identify chemical compounds.
- spectrofluorometer — an instrument in which the spectrum of secondarily emitted fluorescent light is used to identify chemical compounds.
- subatomic particle — physics:
- super giant slalom — a slalom race in which the course is longer and has more widely spaced gates than in a giant slalom.
- super middleweight — a boxer weighing up to 168 pounds (75.6 kg), between middleweight and light heavyweight.
- super royal octavo — a book size, 63⁄4 by 101⁄4 inches
- super royal quarto — a book size, 101⁄4 by 131⁄2 inches
- superciliary ridge — browridge.
- supraorbital ridge — browridge.
- surgical appliance — a specialized device used by somebody to relieve a particular medical condition
- temporal summation — the act or process of summing.
- the general public — the people in a society; people in general
- to hold your peace — If you hold or keep your peace, you do not speak, even though there is something you want or ought to say.
- to play favourites — to display favouritism
- truck center plate — one of a pair of plates that fit together and support the body of a car on a truck, while allowing the truck to rotate with respect to the body. One plate (body center plate) is attached to the underside of the car body and the other (truck center plate) is part of the car truck.
- two-colour process — (in early colour photography) a method of printing which uses superimposed red and green images
- universal coupling — a coupling between rotating shafts set at an angle to one another, allowing for rotation in three planes.
- upper klamath lake — See under Klamath Lakes.
- upper middle class — wealthy, highly-educated people
- upper palaeolithic — the latest of the three periods of the Palaeolithic, beginning about 40 000 bc and ending, in Europe, about 12 000 bc: characterized by the emergence of modern man, Homo sapiens
- upper partial tone — overtone (def 1).
- venture capitalist — funds invested or available for investment in a new or unproven business enterprise.
- vulcan nerve pinch — (jargon) (Or "three-finger salute", Vulcan death grip; from the old "Star Trek" TV series via Commodore Amiga hackers) The keyboard combination that forces a soft boot or jump to ROM monitor (on machines that support such a feature). On an Amiga this is done with Ctrl/Right Amiga/Left Amiga; on IBM PCs and many microcomputers it is Ctrl/Alt/Del; on Suns, L1-A; on some Macintoshes, it is
- ! Silicon Graphics users are obviously the most dextrous however, as these machines use the five-finger combination: Left Shift/Left Ctrl/Left Alt/Keypad Divide/F12. Compare quadruple bucky. - white trumpet lily — a lily, Lilium longiflorum, of Japan, having fragrant, pure white, trumpet-shaped flowers nearly 7 inches (18 cm) in length.